You never did get an automatic "half-way" head start - you still needed to get $20,000 SQD and 100,000 SQM. It's just if you failed ot achieve that, you would still get 50K, which will remain true under the new system.
Apart from probably having to spend more, the big change is that if you had a premier credit card you will no longer get large mileage rollovers.
Note there is a whole topic on this thread subject.